


Artemis Agrotera

by Nakimochiku



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: M/M, One-Sided Attraction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-10
Updated: 2015-03-10
Packaged: 2018-03-17 05:19:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3516854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nakimochiku/pseuds/Nakimochiku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The goddess of the hunt tempted all men, but only one captured her heart. Or; Daryl wants Glenn and is perfectly aware that he can't have him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Artemis Agrotera

**Let me be your Orion,  
** **Only; spare me the arrow to my skull**

_The world is a wash of colours; green, dirty yellow, blue. These are the colours of silence, of forests’ hearts and deep summer afternoons, punctuated only with the twang-swish-thunk of a crossbow bolt finding its home, straight and true, and the shuffle-scrape-snarl of the walking dead._

_All is cool, calm, just the smell of rotting things, growing things, dirt, blood and death._

_Silence is a dead thing. It stinks as high as any corpse. Silence has a way of choking out all around it, suffocating in its simultaneous fullness and emptiness, a void of truth screamed through the utter nothingness._

_Daryl likes silence best._

_Nothing is truer than the awkward fumbling grasping for words in silence like gasping for air in water. And when nothing, not a sound but the rustle of leaves and the twittering of birds and the chattering of squirrels, can be found, Daryl melts away into the forest's void, green, dirty yellow and blue._

"So uh," Glenn tries, tripping over himself in a pair of work boots a half size too large for him, leaves crackling, twigs snapping with each step he takes. "What’d you do before?" Daryl grunts, crossbow half raised, eyes narrowed, searching for prey with all five senses. "You know, before the end." Glenn pauses, waits, but Daryl makes no effort to reply. He’s hunting, and Glenn’s stilted attempts at conversation amuse him. 

They walk for another minute or so, Daryl’s footfalls silent on the forest floor, and Glenn’s as loud and destructive as a tornado. He turns to glare at Glenn just once in warning, and finds him looking miserable and fidgety in the silence.

"C'mon man, talk to me. It’s so fucking quiet out here, the silence is killing me."

Daryl shrugs. Glenn is a city slicker, grown used to three different stereos blaring music at all hours of the night, traffic horns careening by and sirens blaring and fading away every few minutes like ocean waves coming in and out on the rough shores of the city’s streets. The forest, with no human sounds but footsteps and breathing, with no music but birdsong, no alarms save the occasional gale of the wind through the leaves, must be unnerving.

"There’s a difference 'tween quiet and silence." He says, and Glenn startles a little. "Silence is absolute. But the forest ain’t ever absolutely quiet. G'on. Listen." 

Glenn frowns at him, and Daryl waves a hand at him. He closes his eyes, listens. There must be a marsh nearby, because a redwing black bird gives a shrill humming cry. Somewhere a hawk shrieks, and everywhere crows caw ceaselessly. Little paws skitter over bark, cicadas buzz in waves, a hurricane in their ears standing in the midst of it.

While Glenn is blessedly silent, listening to the forests equivalent of city noises, Daryl shoots down squirrels, a rhythm becoming the drumbeat bass to the forest’s symphony, twang-swish-thunk, out of place, a man made sound. He gets three squirrels while Glenn just listens.

"Alright." Glenn sighs, shoulders relaxing as he rests his hands on his hips. Daryl raises a brow at him, drawing the string back up to the catch and fitting another bolt in before collecting his kill, half heartedly wiping the bloody bolt off with the rag hanging from his back pocket. "Alright." Glenn says again. "I see what you were saying about silence, but I can’t exactly have a conversation with the crows."

"Y'can, just don’t expect ‘em t' say anythin' intelligent." He crouches to take aim at another squirrel, scampering up a tree.

"And what are you, a modern day redneck Disney princess?" Glenn’s crooked smile says he doesn’t mean anything harmful by it. "I can’t talk to crows or any other woodland creatures, so."

"So."

"Talk to me, man, tell me about literally anything." Daryl grunts and Glenn throws his hands up in defeat. He leans against a tree, twirling his knife around his fingers, his fist curled loosely around the red handle of his machete. Sunlight trickles in through the leaves, dapples on the subtle curve of his face, shaded yellow and green. 

Daryl thinks of joining him, of listening to the cacophony of the forest, but he doesn’t. He has neither the luxury nor the strength. A bird calls nearby, and Daryl whistles back to it. When it calls again, Glenn whistles back an answer.

"Tolja y'can hold a conversation." He says, lightly with an edge of teasing.

"You are a Disney princess." He goes on whistling to the bird, every other call punctuated with the twang-swish-thunk of Daryl’s crossbow.

_Glenn should be as transparent as crystal waters of shallow lakes to him, glittering water smooth pebbles sprinkled over the riverbed of his psyche. He is. Or, he was. Now he’s grown deep as a well and deeper still. The water is as clear as ever, but the thing about deep waters is they get dark towards the bottom, so that every pretty, smooth glittering pebble is hidden by layers of grey, blue, green and black._

_Daryl considers diving as deep as his lungs will allow him to go, until he reaches the bottom, scoops those pebbles up between both hands, stirring up the silt at the bottom to turn the water murky, to churn Glenn all up._

_The only thing stopping him is the fact that when you dig into people, people dig into you. And Daryl's mind is muddy swamp water. He’d rather Glenn not drown in a few feet of muck looking for something pretty in him._

The yellow jacket is a slow, ponderous river, fast moving over stones before sliding languidly into dips. The water is clear so that moss slimy rocks and the water snails clinging to them are revealed like poorly kept secrets. Glenn and Carl wade into the water together, and it only goes up to about the knees, piss poor for splashing around in, not that they don’t give it a good try. Daryl watches from a boulder, left near the river by receding glaciers some billions of years ago, cross bow over his knees.

"Wish there was a break in the trees." Carol sighs, spot washing stained t-shirts. "I could lay the laundry out in the sun to dry." She tosses the t shirt to Daryl, and he hangs it over a branch above his head. "Don’t you wanna have a wash too?"

Daryl grunts. Carol winks at him and scrubs viciously at one of Ricks gore infested shirts. Daryl slips off his perch to find some place to sit in the eddies of the cool water, rinse off some of the days grime. He finds a private place, shaded by low hanging branches.

Glenn sloshes through the water towards him like a charging hippo, dripping, dark haired, the sun shining through the leaves and rippling on the water speckling him like leopard spots. Daryl slouches further into the shadows like a weed.

"You remind me of stories my grandmother used to tell me." Glenn says, and Daryl grunts, tries not to look at Glenn directly for fear of being blinded by the sparkle of water droplets caught on him like little jewels. "The ones where huntsmen would stumble on fairies while they were bathing. Steal their clothes and force them to get married."

"Don’t y' dare." Daryl growls. Glenn laughs with his whole body. Daryl knows those stories; they are about lust and enchantment. Despite Glenn finding him in his little hollow and the threat of his pranks, he wonders which of them are the huntsmen and which is the fairy, because he’s certainly not pretty enough for that. He’s not pretty enough to make a monster of a man. The role of huntsman suits him well though; he is already enchanted. "Y'leave my clothes right where I put ‘em."

"Don’t you worry, I’ll do it when you least expect it." Glenn winks. "Come out and play with us." he invites, splashing a wave in his direction.

"Ain’t no animal, parading round in m'skin. Ain’t a kid neither." But Daryl sends a splash back just the same, something that could be a smile if given enough time and reason tugging the corners of his mouth. 

Glenn doesn’t press, turning to go, before remembering something and opening his closed fist. "Here, Carl found it." Glenn says, and tosses Daryl something. He catches it, studies it in his palm. "We don’t know what it is, but I figured you’d like it." 

It’s a small stone, glimmering and smooth from being worn by the river. Daryl gives a quick nod, and reaches back to the shore to tuck it in the pocket of his pants. Glenn departs with a grin and a splash and a mutter of, "pack rat." But Glenn doesn’t understand that gathering things, not for their value but because he simply likes them, is a novelty that Daryl fully intends to enjoy.

_On a hunt, there is only predator and prey, savagery and docility. The wild is in constant opposition, finding an unsteady balance that teeters in one direction or the other._

_On the hunt, it is easy to sit still for hours, melt into the shrubbery. It is easy to become a dry leaf on the forest floor, a broken bit of twig. It is easy to become transparent and immaterial, just a wisp of smoke, an exhale of carbon dioxide, an idea. It is easy to become the smell of leather, old blood and cross bow grease._

_Daryl can sit perfectly still in the company of others. He can tune out life and noise, fading into discarded tin cans and bullet shells. He can hunt among the others, and like prey animals, they do not know a predator is among then until it is too late, and he has leapt and snapped up one of them in his jaws._

_He can sit perfectly still, eyes fixed on a single prize, until black doe eyes -- grown steely over time -- fix on him, glitter and call him over._

_Maybe it is strange to watch Glenn with the same intensity he watches prey on the hunt, to tuck himself into a corner to be forgotten and watch with single minded focus and think, now. If Glenn were a buck, the shot would pierce his chest now, and he’d go down gracefully. But the intensity of the hunt feels natural, and everything about Glenn is in opposition to him. They are just nature taking its course._

_They are merely the wild at work._

He always eats his canned dinners alone from a perch, far enough from the fire so it doesn’t hinder his night vision, watching his strange family, watching the darkness that threatens them. Someone else is on watch, but Daryl stares out at the night just the same, scraping his spoon around his empty can of beans to get the last of its sauce.

They tell stories around the fire, childhood experiences and its-true-it-happened-to-a-friend tall tales. Daryl is far enough away that the flickering firelight shadows hide him from view, but close enough to hear. Glenn speaks. Daryl watches. Glenn’s holding Maggie’s hand, but the other he uses to talk, drawing out his stories world with his fingers. "Once upon a time, there was a huntsman."

"Like Daryl." Carl chirps, and the group chuckles.

"Not like Daryl at all." Glenn answers, black eyes glinting fire light. "Because this hunter was a bad man. And our hunter’s only a grumpy one." They chuckle fondly again. He looks around the fire, and realizing something’s missing, looks out at the night. He can’t see properly, Daryl knows, but he goes still just the same, like an animal caught in the flare of headlights. "Speaking of, Daryl, come over here with us."

Glenn waits for some reply from the darkness, and when everyone starts looking for him, Daryl comes over, taking a seat in the space Michonne and Rick make between them. He is directly across from Glenn, gazing at the fire fly sparks the fire throws up reflected in Glenn’s dark eyes. "What’s this I hear 'bout grumpy hunters?" he grumbles, Gesturing for Glenn to finish his story.

"Well, our evil hunter was out in the woods, tracking a deer. He followed it until he didn’t recognize the forest he was in, everything looked strange. He came suddenly upon a river, where a beautiful fairy was bathing."

Daryl watches the night, because it is no longer safe to watch Glenn. He watches the breeze toying in their meager tin can alarm system. He can hear the distant hoot of an owl, the skittering of rodents, but Glenn’s story underscores the night sounds.

"I love you, you’re beautiful, and I want you to be mine. You can’t run away. I’ve hidden your clothes so you cannot return to the fairy realm. Stay with me. Forever and ever."

"I don’t think I like this story." Carl murmurs, throwing twigs in the fire.

"S'only a story, kiddo." Daryl assures as Rick pats down his dark hair. Daryl knows this story. It eerily echoes his every thought. He is the huntsman, and Glenn is the fairy and deer both.

_Humanity is like any other once great creature that's roamed the earth. It shaped the whole planet in its image like god shaped Adam, and after some years, was wiped out. In retrospect its reign is short, brutal and furious like roman emperors, dictators one second and the next ousted in the ides of March._

_Maybe someday, in another billion years or so, some newly evolved species will scratch at their bones, hold their skulls, all with bullet holes in them, and speculate at their lives, at their extinction event, like the dinosaurs._

_But for humanity, it is neither a volcano nor a meteor that crumbles its kingdom to ash._

_Daryl’s glad it was this. He's glad it wasn't nuclear fallout or a natural disaster of catastrophic proportions. He's glad it was something as poetic and peaceful as the walking dead. He's glad it is like the cycle of life, or the ouroborus, eating itself to renew itself. That is the way things ought to be._

_Glenn doesn't see it, but then, the poetry of their demise, the balance of it, doesn't matter to him. He is a scavenger, a survivor, rooting among the wreckage for just one more second, gathered into minutes, to live on the ruined earth. He doesn't care about balance, he cares about life. That’s what makes him so human._

_Daryl is a hunter; he cares about balance. He's an animal, he's just wearing the wrong skin._

"Daryl." Glenn calls. Something flashes across his vision, white and sparkling. Daryl catches it, fabric soft in his hands. It’s a dress, silky, lacy and decidedly feminine, quickly smudged by Daryl's dirty fingers.

"The hell d'you need this for?" Daryl asks, holding the dress up to inspect the delicate folds of crochet lace. "S'a bit too big for Maggie dontcha think?" Glenn's laughter floats back to him.

"You looked out of it, thought it’d cheer you up." He’s still rummaging through the car trunk, very deliberating stepping over the gooey corpse he killed to get at the supplies. "Suits you." Daryl tosses the dress at Glenn’s head, and looks up and down the jam packed high way, and does not think of the little girl they once lost in a similar place. "You alright?" Glenn asks after a quiet moment tossing the dress right back at him and inspecting a can opener. He places it on the roof of the car to be packed away later, joining a box of granola bars and cans of Coca-Cola.

"You’re fifty years too early to be worrying 'bout me." Daryl grumbles, fingers idly toying in the lace of the dress, wondering if maybe carol would appreciate it. She’s always saying she wants to wear pretty things.

"Only old men say stuff like that." Glenn laughs, turning a pack of batteries over in his hand and hisses when he finds battery acid leaking all over the package. He drops it unceremoniously to the cracked pavement and keeps digging.

"I’m old enough to you, kid."

"Yeah bullshit. You’re not so old."

Daryl does not think to find hope in that, instead, he whistles lowly, a bird call he has taught to his whole family, as he spots a straggling group of walkers. Glenn’s head bops up. He glances around, curses venomously, and starts shoving his finds into his back pack.

Daryl straddles his bike and revs the engine so that it rumbles and roars beneath him.

"Let’s blow this popsicle stand." Glenn says against his shoulder, arms tight around his waist. Yes, Daryl thinks, swinging the bike around and weaving through baking husks of vehicles. Yes, let’s do that, and then keep driving till the gas and our bullets run out.

_The ocean is supposed to be a paragon of power, ceaseless, fathomless. The only thing greater and deeper is space. Glenn, made of wells growing deeper, made of gravity and relative laws, should be the ocean. Glenn should be space. He should be eternally expanded outwards or wearing away at the stone shores of Daryl’s heart._

_He is not. Space is a marble, galaxies like cats eyes caught in glass. The ocean is the breadth of a bathtub._

_The only force of nature to Daryl is the forest. A patch of land with trees on it can be a million things. It grows thicker towards the middle as though trying to protect a secret. You can comb it through a million times, and you will always find something different. Sometimes you will find a bird’s nest, a mushroom, a tangle of snakes. And if you look away you’ll never see them twice._

_That is Glenn. Glenn is a secret at the center of a forest, grown over with brambles. Glenn is the young buck, the forest prince; gone in the flash of a tail, or standing his ground with the shake of his antlers. Glenn is the gentle but strong forest, bursting through cracks in the pavement, thick roots growing deep strong and unshakeable._

_Daryl is merely the hunter stalking in him, among him, for him._

_The heavens are the realm of Zeus. The oceans are the watery palaces of Poseidon. But he is the hunter in the wild lands, and the forest is the only place for him._

Glenn goes hunting with Daryl less to learn the craft, and more to watch his back. Daryl doesn’t mind his company despite the volume of his footsteps and his chatter; he kind of enjoys the background noise, keeping him tethered to the moment and his family both.

Sometimes Daryl wonders if he wouldn't still become a hermit, hiding out in the hills of Georgia with himself and the forest for company.

"Do you ever feel bad for some of the animals you hunt?" Glenn asks, wearily dispatching a walker that shuffled too close for comfort. Its early morning yet, no sound but chattering birds, and Glenn’s movements are easy and lazy.

"Used to." Daryl bends to check the forest floor, scanning the dirt and fallen twigs for disturbances and tracks.

"Used to?" Glenn repeats with a hint of humour.

"Yeah. Cried like a baby the first time I shot a rabbit."  He remembers being eight, skinny, fingers small around his hunting knife, shaking as he skinned the rabbit, tears staining his cheeks and dripping into soft bloody fur. Glenn coos at him, and Daryl shoots him a dirty look, standing again to move into the underbrush. "But, I learned hunting to live ain’t a bad thing. I’m not bad, when I hunt. Just following the natural order."

"You were a philosophical kid." Glenn chuckles. He perks suddenly when he finds a raspberry bush as he trips after Daryl in the bushes, and gathers his shirt into a basket to pick them, shoving one in his mouth for every two he drops in his shirt. "What’s the natural order, Master Daryl?"

Daryl idly throws a rock, and Glenn giggles amiably, lips stained with raspberry juice so they are obscenely red around his teasing grin. "If owls can catch mice, and lions can catch zebra, why shouldn’t I hunt deer?" Daryl shrugs, wonders if it’ll be snake meat again for dinner, and joins Glenn at the raspberry bush. 

"It’s not wrong to want to survive." Glenn murmurs. He glances at Daryl then, but his smile doesn’t reach his eyes. "That hits a little too close to home."

Daryl grunts, pops a raspberry into his mouth and licks the juice away from his fingers. He does not think of the things they have done in the name of survival, does not think of the people lost along the way. 

"Daryl, look." Glenn breathes, so quietly Daryl wouldn’t have heard him if he hadn’t spoken into his ear, one hand tapping his shoulder. Daryl shivers, glances in the direction Glenn points, where a family of rabbits are out grazing, nibbling grass and fallen raspberries, big eyes dark and ears floppy. Glenn watches them hop lazily with what Daryl can only call childlike wonder, and while he watches the rabbits, Daryl watches him, thinking Glenn's doe black eyes are fairly glittering, the first he’s seen them do so in a long time. He thinks he hasn’t seen beneath Glenn’s steely outer layer in months, so that it’s like seeing him anew.

"Oh." Glenn says, coming back to himself as he glances at Daryl. "You gonna shoot them?" Daryl casts one last look at the uncaring family of feasting rabbits and shrugs his crossbow into a more comfortable position.

"Nah. Craving snake tonight anyway."

"Bullshit." Glenn says affectionately, cradling his harvested raspberries carefully. "You’re just a big softie that likes cute fluffy animals." Daryl jostles him with his elbow. "Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone."

Daryl’s glad of that. He likes that this moment will be just between them. He can monopolize the way Glenn had looked when the forest peeled back a layer of itself to show him something beautiful.

_There are shadows in places; in the hollows of his belly button and his eyes. There are shadows at the ridges of each raised knot of scar tissue, and every fold of his skin. He is a photograph, flattened and rendered in light and dark to imply form. He likes to think himself deep, he knows himself shallow._

_Shallow shadows to trip and get lost in._

_Glenn neither looks into these shadows fearlessly, nor ignores them completely. He shines a light in each crevice, chasing back the shadows as though they never were. For him the shadows don’t exist, he doesn’t see them. Daryl is bright, whole and undamaged. Glenn is so blissfully ignorant of his many flaws, or to be more precise is aware of each one and thinks so little of them, that for a few moments he is sunlit corridors and rib vaulted arches._

_Then Glenn is gone as swift as mornings red rays, and Daryl is all shadows again._

When Daryl was young, he was prone to nightmares. Now, every damn day is a waking nightmare, so he can barely convince himself to close his eyes. He waits sleepless through the night, listening to his family’s light snoring. He is as nocturnal as the creatures he listens to, hooting and howling like demons in the dark. 

He can’t rest; he is all wound muscle and unease, and it’s exhausting, but he can’t stop. The fires burn low, hellish red light ominous on the lines of Rick’s face, on the dark sheen of Michonne’s skin.

Across the fire, one arm secure around Maggie's waist, Glenn blinks awake, brow furrowed. Their eyes meet in the dark, and Glenn's little frown deepens. "Daryl?" He whispers.

"Go back to sleep." Daryl murmurs. He draws a twig around in the soil by his side idly, all small movements as he tries not to wake Carol. Instead of obeying, Glenn heaves himself up, steps around sleeping forms, and makes himself comfortable beside him.

"Anything wrong?"

"Nah. Go on back to sleep." 

Glenn shrugs, hugs his knee to his chest and resting his chin on it. "I’m too awake."  They sit in silence for a long time, as Glenn stifles yawns. 

"Too awake my ass." Daryl grumbles fondly, ruffling Glenn’s hair.

Glenn smiles and yawns widely. "Can’t leave you alone with your thoughts in the middle of the night."

"Ain’t the middle of the night anymore. S'almost dawn." Glenn is warm at his side, tripping some line between welcome company and an uninvited hindrance. But perhaps it is the sleeping forms, or the time of night, or his own weariness, but Glenn makes no chatterbox effort to talk, to fill the air with noise to help him forget everything else.

"Too bad we can’t see the sunrise for all these trees." Glenn mourns sullenly. One by one, the forest wakes, chirping birds serving as alarm clocks. With the growing noise, his family starts to rustle and stir beneath their improvised blankets, snuggling deeper into their improvised pillows.

"There’s a good out cropping of rock up a ways, if you wanna see the sun rise. Take Maggie maybe."  Daryl wants to bite his tongue, but the words slip out just the same, coloured green with envy and darkened with bitterness.

"Well I was saying we would watch the sunrise together, seeing as how we're already up. But that’s hopelessly romantic of you." Glenn bumps shoulders, grins at him. Daryl bumps back, fingers toying with the frayed hole at the knee of his jeans. Glenn’s silent a long moment, just watching him, and Daryl meets his eyes in tiny glances. "You sure you okay?"

Daryl hums a vague affirmative.

"Yeah don’t pull that with me, Dixon. That means jack shit."

"Just couldn’t sleep." He can never sleep. It’s all he can do sometimes to just sit still and rest, without feeling a blade at his temple or teeth at his throat. "I’m alright."

Glenn stands just as the sun’s first red rays burst through the leaves, haloing his head in crimson and gold. "This is probably a difficult concept for you, but you’re not superman. Even you need to stop for a little bit. It’s okay." He moves back to Maggie’s side, curling around her. "We'll have your back when you’re sleeping the way you always have ours."

He closes his eyes, leaving Daryl to lay back in the patch of grass allotted to him, prodded in the sides by Michonne’s knees. He closes his eyes and pretends to sleep, even as everyone else rouses, perhaps to avoid Carol’s concerned queries about his sleeping patterns. He listens to their waking sounds, the fire being built back up and supplies clanking as they rummage and pack.

"Daryl’s still asleep?" Michonne whispers as she moves beside him, unfolding her jacket to slip it on.

"Yeah." Comes Glenn’s voice. "Let him sleep in a bit. He deserves it." 

Daryl thinks briefly of getting up anyway, of going hunting for breakfast, of making himself useful. But his body is full of stones, and his eyes refuse to open, and the sounds of his family; talking, cooking, rustling, living, lulls him to sleep.

_The hardest part is knowing he can’t have Glenn. Not indefinitely. Not until further notice, not at all. He can stalk him around corners on silent feet, he can shoot him a hundred thousand times in his head, but he won’t do it, and he can’t have him._

_And even if he could, what would he do? Stuff him and mount him on the wall? Dishonor the great prince of the forest by hanging his preserved carcass up like some trophy to his skill?_

_Better that he always hunt Glenn. Better that he watch him until Glenn catches him at it, better that he times his strikes between the beats of his heart and his exhales, better that he and Glenn breathe in unison as one person until for just a little while, he can pretend he’s not an animal, there is not a whole forest growing up through his mouth._

_Better that he resist Glenn and all his little secrets hidden by fallen leaves in dips and hollows of the forest floor. He doesn’t want to get lost in him, because if he does he will never want to find his way out again._

_The forest is Daryl’s kingdom, but Glenn is something over which he has no power._

**I’ll make my bones to stars for you  
** **Just; spare me that arrow to my skull**


End file.
